My name is Marissa and just like every other smartphone user out there, I am guilty of the selfie. But tell me to step out from behind the filters, and I am just a high-resolution disaster.
According to Merriam-Webster, a selfie is “an image of oneself taken by oneself using a digital camera, especially for posting on social networks.”
At the risk of sounding a little bit neurotic, there is an art in self-portraiture, and as most of my fellow fauxtographers already know, it is not easy. It takes titling your phone to an exact degree while looking at the perfect angle all without sacrificing your killer smize. It takes work, but the instant gratification you get from uploading the perfect selfie is priceless.
If you’re anything like me and have had your thumb cramp up from too much time spent scrolling through your Instagram feed, you know that celebrities aren’t one to give up shameless self-promotion.
Nothing quite screams “Look at me!” more than a shirtless selfie, a la Chris Pratt or Calvin Harris (you are welcome in advance). Everyone from Miley Cyrus, the Pope, Kylie Jenner and even President Barack Obama have jumped onto the digital narcissism bandwagon.
One of the most well-known selfies of our decade has to be the Ellen DeGeneres 2014 Oscar selfie which has wracked up more than 3 million retweets to date. However, it boggles my mind how celebrities choose to humbly brag about their amazing lives before proceeding to protest their lack of privacy shortly after.
“Aspirational,” directed by Matthew Frost and starring Kirsten Dunst, is a cynical take on how the selfie culture has altered human interaction. Dunst, who stars as herself, is stopped by two fans who are more interested in the “likes” they were getting from posting the picture than the actual act of engaging with the actress.
While the short film was made to poke fun at the trend, could this be a foreshadowing of the road leading us to possible pathological self-obsession?
Whether we like it or not, selfies have slowly made their way into our lives.
Technology has made it possible to not only capture and share but also to manipulate how we want to be represented.
In a single tap, we have the ability to change how we look. I’m sure we have all met people who look nothing like their social media profile picture.
Our obsession with capturing the moment has made us miss its essence entirely.
Must a visit to the gym, the bars or even the museum only be verifiable if there is sufficient evidence recorded? Few of us realize that we’ve chosen to sacrifice the true experience of the moment by trying so hard to capture it.
Marissa Iqbal Hakim can be reached at [email protected] or @daenamarissa on Twitter.
